


Postcard Perfect

by hazel



Category: Secret Circle - L. J. Smith
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-08
Updated: 2005-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel/pseuds/hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, come on, Portia, it's a lovely day out, and you can bring your book with you to read on the beach, if you like." Cass Howard’s voice was pleading, amused; she knew she'd get Portia to go outside with her eventually, but the fifteen minutes of whining to get her to agree was half the fun, a tradition. </p><p>[Written for a challenge where Cassie was Portia's best friend.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for ljsficfest in 2005; beta'd by nishatalitha.

"Oh, come on, Portia, it's a lovely day out, and you can bring your book with you to read on the beach, if you like." Cass Howard’s voice was pleading, amused; she knew she'd get Portia to go outside with her eventually, but the fifteen minutes of whining to get her to agree was half the fun, a tradition.   
  
Portia looked up from her book, a tattered old copy of Symposium that had been passed down to her from Jordan's failed Philosophy course at MIT. "I know I can take my book with me; I don't need you to tell me that. And it's not a lovely day outside - it's too hot and I'll freckle."   
  
"You always freckle, and if you know you can take your book why won't you hurry up already? It's almost half past three, and if we don't go soon the water will be too cold to properly swim. Lisa and Therese said they'd be there this afternoon." Portia bit her lip.   
  
"Come on," Cass insisted. "Please?"   
  
Portia rolled her eyes but bookmarked her page and shoved the book in with her bathing suit and towel anyway. "I think Jordan's home - shall I see if he can give us a ride, since you're so desperate to get there?"   
  
"No, it's only a five minute walk, and I don't feel like fighting through the junk in his back seat to find a seat, you know?"   
  
Portia giggled, and they got up to leave the house. "He cleaned it last weekend, because he thought his girlfriend might be coming down for the weekend, and she's apparently a complete neat freak -"   
  
"Worse than you?" Cass interjected.   
  
"Oh, shut up! No, anyway, she called him on Saturday night, apparently something came up with her family and she had to delay. He was really moody all Sunday - Dad yelled at him after church for being disrespectful to Aunt Clarisse," Portia confided. "So..." They walked past the parlour. "Mom, Cass and I are just going down to the beach, I'll be back for dinner, okay?" Portia called out. "So, Logan told me he called her Monday evening to make sure everything was alright, and she's coming down this weekend instead. I haven't met her yet, but Logan says she's nice."   
  
"I can't believe Jordan has a _nice_ girlfriend!" Cass said, just as Mrs. Bainbridge's "Alright, girls," drifted out of the parlour.   
  
"That's a horrible thing to say," Portia retorted, but she was fighting a smile.   
  
The walk down to the beach was pretty, past postcard-perfect white cottages with white picket fences and rambling flower gardens. Every third house had a dog in the front garden or a children's tricycle parked outside the front gate; birds chirped while clouds drifted lazily overhead. Cass, in a fit of childishness, decided to leapfrog all of the cracks in the pavement, holding her straw hat firmly on her head with one hand and laughing as her skirt tangled and flirted around her legs.   
  
"Oh my Lord," Portia hissed. "What on earth are you doing?" There was a martial gleam in her eyes, which Cass ignored in favour of twirling around a lamp-post.  
  
"Dancing, Portia," Cass chirped. "It's a lovely day and we're going to the seaside. What could be more perfect?"   
  
"Well, stop it, it's embarrassing." Cass huffed, before grinning sideways at Portia and stopping suddenly to admire a particularly pretty honeysuckle.   
  
"And now you're the one holding me up," said Portia, smug. The walk continued in a much more orderly fashion from then, although by that point it was only a few hundred yards to the beach and there was barely time to hastily agree not to comment on Therese's tan, or lack thereof, or enquire after John Bartley, since Portia had heard from Frances Eldercott that he and Lisa had broken up.   
  
People who didn't know them often mistook Cassandra Howard and Portia Bainbridge for sisters. It was a superficial resemblence only: both with mousey blonde hair and blue eyes, although Cass's hair sparkled in the light in a way Portia was openly envious of, and Portia's eyes were darker, richer. Cass was all soft curves and dreamy smiles, while Portia was sharp angles and piercing gazes, but there was a certain similarity to the way they held their heads when something caught their attention.   
  
It was funny, then, that it was Cass who often prodded Portia - inclined to literature and solitude - into activity. Cass (sometimes Cassandra, never Cassie: "Of all the possible shortenings of my name, Cassie is by far the one I most despise," she'd said one evening, after finishing one of her mother's Georgette Heyer novels) was more popular, and Portia the smarter; Portia was abrupt and often acidic, while Cass was not inclined to make her opinions known. Portia needed careful handling if she was to be at all pleasant - luckily, Cass had practise. They'd been best friends since fourth grade, after all.   
  
The conversation at the beach was trivial. Lisa confirmed her breakup with John, and the girls whispered and giggled over possibilities now that the field to date the school's prettiest girl was open again. Theresa bemoaned a lost summer spent typing in her mother's law firm: "I suppose it will look good on my college applications, at least," she sighed, and Portia had nodded firmly. With two older brothers who'd managed to pull acceptances out of MIT, she was the most knowledgeable in the group about such things. Cass drew faces in the sand, periodically letting the tiny flakes of stone sift through her hands. She didn't know why, and had certainly never spoken of it, but she'd always felt oddly connected to the beach.   
  
Some boy they'd seen earlier in the week working on the fishing wharves walked down the beach with a dog at his heels. The boys from the wharves were prone to doing that: out-of-towners who'd come to the Cape looking for a good job or a sizzling summer romance or simply a break from whatever it was they did in Kansas or wherever they were from. The men from the wharves never did; they knew better.   
  
Suddenly, Cass felt a wet nose sniffing at the small of her back. "Call off your dog," she announced to the air, not looking up until she heard a snap of fingers and a soft whimper.   
  
"Come on, Raj," the boy said, resigned, as he continued along the shore, and something in his voice, the timbre perhaps, made her sneak a look through her eyelashes as he strode away, strong shoulders in a flannel shirt and equally strong legs in cut-offs and sneakers.   
  
It was only sheer luck that had landed Alexandra Howard, pregnant and unmarried, a job in a public law firm on Cape Cod, in the early spring of 1976. She'd been days away from giving in to her urges to hitch-hike to California, but a chance meeting in a diner with a young lawyer named Emily Metton, who'd happened to be looking for someone to do the administration in her small offices, convinced her to stay. Emily, pregnant with her third child, had listened sympathetically to Alexandra's not-entirely-fabricated story of an older man who'd disappeared after a fight, told the story to her husband that evening during dinner, and cleaned out the spare room that very evening. There Alexandra, barely nineteen, scared, and dreadfully uncertain, had settled, and there she had stayed, moving out to a tiny apartment of her own three months after Cassandra Anne’s birth.   
  
All this Cass knew. The story was told every Christmas by Emily and David Metton, the mysterious older man becoming older and more mysterious every year. Her mother hadn't added much more to the story to Cass in private, although she did occasionally say that she'd called her mother, who lived up the North Shore somewhere. Despite being not more than a few hour's drive away, they'd never visited.   
  
Cass had always been slightly conscious that she didn't know who her father was, and that compared to her friends she wasn't very well off. So she'd always felt rather sorry for the boys on the wharves, whose existence they didn't deign to acknowledge. But Jordan (who she didn't trust very well) and Logan (who had always been kind to her) had told stories of girls caught out by poor boys, and she'd never wanted to start a social uprising anyway.   
  
Portia was muttering something under her breath, so Cass threw her handful of sand after the boy, a hundred feet away by now, and finally looked up from the pattern of her skirt. "What's wrong, Portia?"   
  
"Nothing," Portia blinked. "It's nothing. You were talking about your college applications, Therese? I'm really nervous about my S.A.T.s; I know it's over a year away, but my father says you can never be too prepared, and I want to get into Harvard."   
  
"We know," Lisa said impatiently. "Really, Portia. Now, do you think I should go after Jim Barnes or Doug Caddock? Doug's family has a yacht, but Jim is far nicer. Note that I’m not asking _you_ , Cass; you’re all flirt and no action.”  
  
“Hey, I’ve kissed boys,” she defended herself halfheartedly, the rest of her mind oddly fixated on the one glimpse she'd gotten of the boy's red hair.   
  
*  
  
"Sit down, Cassandra, I need to talk to you for a little while," her mother asked, a few days later. Cass, who'd been about to go up to her room to read for a while, and perhaps - if she got very maudlin - write a poem about the boy on the beach, leaned against the edge of her mother's armchair. "On a seat properly, really, how many times do I have to tell you?" Properly chastened, she sat, confused.  
  
"Now, you know I've been talking to my mother, your Grandmother Howard, a little more recently?" Cass nodded. Her mother always got a little tense when she talked about her past, and now was no different, her dark hair falling loose around her shoulders rather than up in her usual knot, so she looked both absurdly young and strangely wistful. "Well, she's been sick for the past few years, you know that, but lately her bad hip has been paining her more than usual, and she's had an attack or two of angina, so we've decided - I'm sorry, but there's really no other solution."  
  
"Solution? What are you talking about?" Cass asked. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand."  
  
"You're young, and it's not really that far a drive, you can come back for weekends to see your friends. And I've got a great job working as office manager for an old acquaintance - friend, really - and I didn't think I would be, but I'm actually quite excited."  
  
"What, mom? What are you excited about?" Cass cried, nervous now because her mother was never this cryptic. Alexandra’s friends were all strong, smart women, and they expected her to be the same. Whatever flight of imagination had caused her to flee her hometown and everybody she knew had been suppressed by seventeen years in a law firm, where everybody was witty or fierce, most both at once. Alexandra dealt in statements of fact, and Cass had never before encountered a mother who almost looked as though she needed protection.   
  
"We're going to move back to my hometown, and in with my mother. She's too old and ill to live alone, and there's nobody else. I think you'll like it there - I did, up until I met your father - and the high school is good."  
  
"But... what? Where? I don't even know where Grandmother lives!"  
  
"The town," and Alexandra shut her eyes for a moment, before continuing, "is called New Salem."  
  
*  
  
"New Salem!" Portia pronounced the syllables as if she'd swallowed something vile. "You're moving where? And why now? School's almost back, and if it's as close as your mom says there's no reason why you can't stay with us for the weeks and drive up there on the weekends." Her words were quick, demanding, and Cass sighed.   
  
"I've tried, Portia," she said. "Mrs. Metton even offered me the spare room at her place for the weeks, so I could stay in school here, but Mom says I have to go with her. Grandmother's really sick, so I can see why, and, you know, Mom said I could borrow the car to come home as often as I want. But we're selling the house, so I guess it's not going to be home anymore, is it?" Her voice was bitter and a little choked, and Portia reached around to stroke her back.   
  
"Well, I guess it's alright. We'll get a good map, and Lisa can drive us up sometimes, since she's got her own car and all."  
  
"Don't bother with the map," Cass said, tired. "It's on an island, and it's not on any maps. Mom says."  
  
"Not on the maps!" Portia repeated. "Oh my Lord, you're moving to some backwater town!"  
  
"Yeah," Cass sniffed. "I know."  
  
*  
  
Sorting through the house took the rest of August. Cass managed, through a combination of begging, pleading, and, when all else failed, taking the car without permission, to get to the beach every fine afternoon, but every evening was spent boxing memories, and her mother woke her up early each morning to inform her that there was work to be done. Since they were moving in with Cass’s grandmother, a lot of the things they owned – appliances, larger pieces of furniture – needed to be sold or given to charity.   
  
Out of all the things in her bedroom, Cass was most attached to her Tiffany lamps and her cheviot mirror; luckily, these were small enough to be transported easily, given that Ms. Howard wasn’t going to the trouble or expense of hiring an entire truck for their things, and nice enough that they shouldn’t look out of place in what Cass’s mother described as a “three hundred year old mausoleum.” They spent three or four evenings sorting through the junk that had accumulated in the attic – old schoolbooks, clothes Cass had outgrown in third grade, a set of skis from an aborted trip to Aspen back when Cass was twelve.   
  
“We only really need personal items,” her mother kept insisting, as they decided that the dinner set and the cutlery could be boxed up for when Cass got her own house, but that the pots and pans would really have to go. Cass bit her lip, for screaming at her mother would serve little purpose: she’d already tried everything but running away to get Alexandra to change her mind. But it occurred to her as she bagged old blankets and winter coats for a trip to the Salvation Army that _personal_ wasn’t so simply defined as something which someone wore everyday or used to clean themselves; that people find almost as much comfort and familiarity in the kettle they’ve been using for five years as they do in their favourite sweater. Moving north wasn’t just going to be strange because she’d suddenly be living with her grandmother or attending a new school; learning where to find the glasses in the kitchen cupboards was going to be just as jarring.  
  
They’d moved quite a few times in Cass’s life, from the first tiny apartment to a slightly larger one when Cass was four, then into a rather unkempt cottage where Alexandra replanted the garden and renovated the kitchen before selling it to a rich couple from New York looking for a vacation home. Then, when Cass was twelve, they’d moved to this house, a tiny Cape Cod with glimpses of the ocean from the upstairs bathroom. Cass loved the winding staircase and the stained glass in the sitting room, and had spent many winter afternoons making brownies in the old and comfortable kitchen. Now she was moving to a house her mother claimed was at least four times the size of anything they’d ever lived in, with several fireplaces and nothing between it and the sea but a cliff. Cass was terrified.  
  
When they were done, everything they were taking fit easily into a covered U-Haul trailer. The Mettons and Portia came over the morning they were due to drive up, ostensibly to help them pack up such last-minute items as toothbrushes and the tea-kettle, but mostly to extract promises of phone calls and letters, and to wish them both good luck. While Emily Metton pressed some sandwiches and a batch of cookies into Alexandra’s hands, Cass pulled Portia aside for her last tour of the back garden.   
  
“It’s not as though I’m moving across the country,” she said, quickly and a little louder than strictly necessary. “I mean, I’ll be able to drive down for weekends and stuff. And we can call each other whenever we want.” Portia, uncharacteristically, said nothing. Perhaps, Cass pondered, she didn’t have anything to say.   
  
“It’s only a three hour drive, that’s barely anything. There are people in L.A. who drive that much every day; I saw a documentary about commuters a while ago. And it can’t be that bad – Mom says that Grandmother is nice, and the town’s on it’s own island… that’s got to be cool, right? But…” her voice slowed down, paused. “But I don’t want to go, Portia, and Mom’s being totally irrational about it. I’m _happy_ here, I don’t want to go.”  
  
“I know. I’m going to miss you, Cass,” Portia said solemnly, and Cass burst into tears, plopping down on the grass and folding her face into her knees. Portia knelt down beside her and patted her shoulder uncomfortably; she didn’t go in for gestures of affection much. Cass wiped her face against her skirt and looked up, eyes red and face spotty – she never looked her best after crying. “But, come on, get up. You know you have to go.”  
  
“I know,” she said eventually, and allowed Portia to pull her up from the ground.   
  
“Besides,” Portia suggested, “it’s not as though you’re moving to the other side of the country. I can drive up every now and then; I’m sure Mom will let me borrow the car.”  
  
“Thanks,” Cass said, smiling faintly. When they got back around to the front of the house, her mother also looked like she’d been crying, and Emily was clutching her husband’s hand rather tightly.   
  
“Well, now,” Mrs. Metton said. “You call us the moment you get there, and let us know you’re alright. And – perhaps you could come back for Thanksgiving? Now, Portia, do you need a ride home?”  
  
“I… we’ll see, Emily,” Alexandra said. “I’m not sure what Mother will want to do, but that would be nice. Now, come on, Cass, get in the car already – we need to get a move on if we want to be there for lunch.”  
  
Cass hugged the Mettons and Portia one last time before getting in the car, and looked back on the three of them standing in front of her old house, waving goodbye, until the car turned a corner and she couldn’t see them anymore. She refused to look at her mother for the entire drive up the South Shore to Boston, where they stopped for a quick break at a service station, and further up the North Shore, where she occupied her time by staring at the colours of the falling leaves.   
  
*  
  
The bridge from the mainland was narrow and old. At first glance, the island wasn’t as small as Cass had been expecting (fearing) – there were a couple of beaches on the mainland side of the island, with cliffs at each end, and most of the land seemed occupied. From the way her mother had talked about it over the years, Cass had halfway been expecting a tiny rocky outcrop populated by hardy rural people and mountain goats, but this seemed much like any other small town in the state.   
  
The town centre was a little odd, though. Most of the small towns along the seaboard at least had one or two visible souveneir shops, and a few bed-and-breakfasts for out-of-towners (usually in renovated Victorian mansions grown too large for the smaller family sizes of the late twentieth century). But New Salem had none of the signs of a booming summer trade in overpriced vacation accomodation, and if it wasn’t for the Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, and International House of Pancakes (Grand Opening Today!), Cass would have thought that the town had been left untouched since. Well. Who knew? She shrugged. What could you expect from a town that wasn’t even on the map?   
  
“Cass?” her mother asked hesitantly. “Are you alright? We’re almost there, but if you don’t want to head up straight away, we can stop and get donuts or something.”  
  
Cass tore her eyes away from the window. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine,” she said, mostly resigned to her situation. “I mean, I’m not _fine_ , you know? But I guess I have to make the most of it, like you said. And, hey, it’s not as though I can never go home again.”  
  
Alexandra had gotten quieter the further north they’d driven. At first she’d tried to make conversation with her daughter, but as the miles slipped by and they drove further north of Boston, she’d fallen into silence. Cass had noticed the uncomfortable weight in the car, even as she’d been ignoring her, but she hadn’t cared enough to try to fix it. “You’re right,” Alexandra said. “I’d like it if you stayed up here for at least a few weeks, just so you give New Salem a chance before you flit off down south, but you can certainly borrow the car every month or so for the weekend.”  
  
The town itself seemed clustered around the main blocks of shops, except for a few large houses high up on the cliff. They drove past a cemetary – Cass held her breath, while her mother looked grave – and through some streets of houses, mostly two storey Victorians with nice fences and gardens, a lot like the area they’d left on the Cape. The houses soon grew further apart, and Cass realised that they were heading towards the large houses up on the cliff.   
  
As they drew nearer, Cass could see that while some of the houses were in wonderful condition, others were run down, with peeling paint and dirty windows. The first house was yellow, and looked cheerful – but they passed that, along with a few that looked haphazardly occupied, and a couple that looked vacant. Cass’s mother stopped at the last house on the road, an ugly box of a place with little windows and great strips of paint hanging from the walls. Her grandmother was obviously not well off, then: these places cost a fortune to keep up, Cass knew, and if she was living alone she couldn’t very well do much of the work herself. “Here we are,” Alexandra said, in a tone that Cass didn’t quite recognise and didn’t want to question. “Number Twelve, Crowhaven Road. My mother will come out and meet us in a moment, I’m sure – she can’t move very quickly anymore, what with her hip.”  
  
Cass took a deep breath and opened the car door. Her mother was definitely looking nervous, and she felt oddly protective. They walked towards the door slowly, Cass almost tripping on the gravel path, and stepped up the creaking wooden steps with great deliberation. It shocked Cass, a little, when the door opened and a grizzled old lady stepped onto the porch, for this woman looked more like the hag from Hansel and Gretel than any apple-cheeked grandmother she’d ever seen in the movies. “Mother,” Alexandra said, uneasy enough that Cass, who’d been staring at the mole on the lady’s cheek, stopped staring and looked back at her. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”  
  
“Too long,” the lady said. “So, this is young Cassandra, is it? I’m your grandmother, Mauve.”  
  
“Yes,” she said. “Cass. Um. I’m called Cass, usually. It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
“It is, it is,” her grandmother agreed. “Come in, the wind is a bit cold for these old bones, and I’ll make you some tea in the kitchen and show you to your rooms.”   
  
The inside of the house was just as decrepit as the exterior, with flickering lights and faded wallpaper. Her grandmother led them through a series of twisting corridors before arriving in a kitchen half the size of Cass’s old house. It had a large fireplace taking up one wall, with diamond-paned windows and a door out to the garden. Incongruously, a microwave sat far back on the old wooden benches. “This is the original house,” her grandmother said.   
  
“I can tell,” Cass replied. “Do you ever use the fireplace?”  
  
Mrs. Howard smiled, an expression which caused a multitude of wrinkles on her face to crinkle and move. “Yes, occasionally. I spend a lot of time here, especially in winter. I make a lot of preserves, but we’ll talk about that later. Our family has lived here since the place was built, you know, fourteen generations.”  
  
“I see you’re still drying your herbs,” Alexandra remarked, speaking for the first time since they’d entered. She sounded drawn, and a little angry; Cass wondered why, since she’d thought that the two women had resolved their differences before the move.   
  
“Of course I am,” Mrs. Howard replied. “But, now, let’s see about getting the two of you settled. I’ve put you in your old room, Alexandra, and Cass, I’ve put you in the room I occupied as a girl – it has a lovely view out over the cliff.”  
  
The room was large, far larger than Cass’s old room, and pink. But although the furniture was heavy and old, the bedposts had exquisite carvings, and the mantle over the fireplace looked like just the right size to put some of her unicorn collection. Cass had always been interested in unicorns, ever since she was a tiny girl; Portia mocked it every chance she got, but could be counted on to add to the collection at birthdays and Christmas. Lisa and Therese had never questioned it, although Therese teased Cass that she’d get over it as soon as she lost her virginity.   
  
*  
  
Cass spent most of the next two days unpacking and arranging her belongings. She explored the house a little, finding a piano – not that she could play, but Lisa and Portia both could – in a room that looked as though it hadn’t been used in a couple of generations, furniture safe under dust covers. There was a formal dining room and two parlours downstairs in a series of connecting rooms, also obviously never used, and then the rooms that showed signs of occupation: a room that looked out over the garden, filled with ornaments and crocheted cushions; a smaller dining room, with vases full of funny-looking flowers and a lovely smell in the air; and the kitchen, which Cass felt at home in from the very first evening.   
  
Her mother lent her the car to do a few errands, and she drove slowly up Crowhaven Road, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone else who lived there. There was a boy in the driveway of Number Two, dark-haired and handsome from a distance, but as the car grew nearer he turned away, and Cass didn’t get a look at his face. She picked up some vegetables from the grocers, the owner interested when she said she was new in town, and then oddly distant when she told him she’d moved into Crowhaven Road.   
  
The third day, her grandmother handed her a package from New Salem High School and told her to pick out some courses. The curriculum seemed to be much the same as it was at her old school, so she didn’t have any trouble, although she didn’t pick Creative Writing since the course said applications to take that class had to be in the previous spring.   
  
*  
  
Soon enough, it was time to start school. The morning of her first day, Cass suffered a bit of a dilemma, trying to decide between her two favourite jerseys, but there was toast with homemade jam for breakfast and her grandmother offered words of encouragement as she gathered her school things. Her mother had already gone off to start her first day at the firm of Meade, Wilcott, Barrett, and Coultier, but had left a note on the fridge wishing Cass good luck. Cass suspected she’d need it; she’d never started at a new school before, not where she didn’t know anyone.   
  
The drive was short – she’d borrowed her grandmother’s white Rabbit and dressed to match it, with a blue skirt and jersey, white blouse, and blue headband. The school was a series of large buildings in red brick, like practically every other school she’d ever seen, but situated as it was halfway up a hill, with tall trees on the grounds and an air of academia, it looked nicer than most. Although she’d left in what she thought was plenty of time, it looked as though everyone drove to school, and she had to park towards the edge of the carpark, a good few hundred yards away from the main building. The other kids looked like the same sort of people she’d left back on the Cape, walking around in groups or couples, with only a few people alone. Cass concentrated on getting to the offices.   
  
The package from the school hadn’t come with a map, so she looked up and down the corridors heading off in various directions before accepting that she had no idea where she was. Just as she was about to ask a girl in a cheerleading outfit where she could find the school secretary, a short girl with long brown hair walked up to her. “Hi!” the girl said cheerfully. “Are you new here? I’m Laurel – you look a little lost.”  
  
Cass smiled. “Yeah, completely. They didn’t think to send a map. I’m Cass, Cass Howard, and I need to find the office – I think my mother organised my transcripts to be forwarded, but they haven’t sent out my schedule.”  
  
Laurel grinned. “That I can help you with. It’s right down here,” she said, leading Cass down a corridor lined with framed photographs of old faculty members and prominent alumni. Cass noticed that a lot of the other kids seemed to be giving her and Laurel odd looks – maybe Laurel didn’t have many friends, or something?  
  
It didn’t take the secretary very long to print out a copy of Cass’s schedule and sign it off. “Welcome to New Salem High School,” the woman said, rather perfunctorally.   
  
“Come on,” Laurel said. “I’ll show you to your first class – what is it?”  
  
“Algebra II with Mr. Macklefield,” Cass replied, looking down at her schedule. “But I should probably find my locker first and get organised.”  
  
Laurel smiled – she seemed a very nice girl. “It’ll probably be on the way – Mr. Macklefield’s classroom is on the other side of the school. And - oh! Hi, Melanie!” she said, greeting another girl who’d walked up to them. “Cass, this is Melanie. Melanie, this is Cass Howard, she’s just moved here and I’m showing her around.”  
  
Melanie, who was tall, with a cap of chestnut hair and a solemn expression, lifted an eyebrow. “Welcome to New Salem, then. Have you just moved here?”  
  
“Yes,” Cass replied. “About a week ago.”  
  
“And whereabouts in town are you living?” Melanie seemed a little abrupt, and Cass wondered if she had wanted to speak to Laurel about something important or something.   
  
“Crowhaven Road, up on the cliff,” she answered, and the two girls stared at her.  
  
Laurel looked up at Melanie, confusion written into her face. “Really?” she asked. Cass didn’t know why it was so odd, although she supposed that a lot of the houses did look as though they’d been occupied by the same families for generations.   
  
“Yeah, Number Twelve. It’s my grandmother’s house, really, but she’s getting on and so we moved back in to help around the place.”  
  
“Well,” Laurel said, bewildered. “That’s a little unexpected.”  
  
“How come?” Cass asked.  
  
“That – well, it’s just that Melanie and I both live on Crowhaven Road as well, and so I know your grandmother. I didn’t even know she had a son.”  
  
Cass snorted. “She doesn’t. Mom never married.” It was a conversation she’d had with quite a few people in her life, and nobody had ever really teased her about it after fifth grade or so. Alexandra Howard was an eminently respectable woman, after all, and had some powerful friends in the women of their small town on Cape Cod.   
  
“Oh!” Laurel gasped, blushing. “I’m sorry. Anyway, so there’s quite a few of us living on Crowhaven Road, mostly related. Our families have all lived there since New Salem was founded, you know. And – what I was going to say before Melanie arrived was that I’m in your math class, so I’ll take you to your locker now and then we can head to class.”  
  
“Alright,” Cass agreed, and they headed away from the portraits of ex-principals.   
  
*  
  
Cass ended up sitting with Laurel and Melanie at lunch, along with the most beautiful girl Cass had ever seen in her life. The girl’s name was Diana, and she lived on Crowhaven Road too – it seemed as though all of Laurel’s friends did. Melanie and Diana were both seniors, but they accepted Cass into their little circle as though she belonged there, even though it seemed as though there were things each of the other girls wanted to discuss, but couldn’t, not in front of her.   
  
Despite this, and despite having perfectly blonde hair and gripping green eyes and a lovely complexion, Cass learnt quickly that Diana was also one of the nicest people she’d ever met. Obviously, Laurel or Melanie had told her sometime that morning that there was a new girl who’d be joining them at lunch, because when Laurel brought Cass to their lunchtable – a table in its own room at the back of the cafeteria, with a microwave and a juice machine and a view over the sports fields – Diana had broken a large piece of brownie into four pieces and offered Cass a piece. “Mrs. Howard is a lovely lady,” was the first thing she said after greeting Laurel and Cass, and it seemed as though that was what they were going to talk about, her appearance in New Salem.   
  
“I don’t know her very well,” Cass offered. “But she seems nice, I guess – she let me take over her kitchen to make a pudding last night. And the house is nice… a little run down, but Mom and I have done up two houses already, and I think Grandmother would like it if we tidied it up a bit. She said she hasn’t done much since my grandfather died.” Cass didn’t know why, but something about Diana made her want to confide in her.   
  
Diana smiled. “You like to bake, then? I like it too; my mom died when I was a baby, so I’ve done a lot of the cooking for as long as I can remember. My dad’s a lawyer, so he’s busy at work a lot.”  
  
“Oh, really?” Cass asked. “My mom’s just started in a law firm here as the office manager – she said she was going to be working for an old friend, and maybe my mom knew your dad, since they lived on the same street? And I’m sorry to hear about your mother.”  
  
“Oh, don’t worry about it, I can’t remember her or anything,” Diana replied easily. “My dad’s name is Harry Meade; he’s a partner in a firm here.”  
  
“I think that’s who my mother’s working for!” Cass exclaimed.   
  
“Well, maybe we could all have dinner together one night, then?” Diana asked. Laurel and Melanie exchanged slightly surprised glances, which Cass noticed out of the corner of her eye.


	2. Chapter 2

The first day set a pattern. Within a week, Diana – who Laurel and Melanie always seemed to listen to – suggested that it would be more sensible for the four of them to carpool, since they lived in the same street. Laurel, who was something of an environmentalist, thought this a wonderful idea, and even Melanie, who Cass was somewhat uncertain of, agreed. Since Cass was using her grandmother’s car, something she felt a little guilty about, this sounded like a great idea, and they agreed to use Diana’s car and each pay her something towards the gas.   
  
Cass did try to strike up conversations with other people, but they all seemed a little afraid of her. She tried to ask Laurel about it: it was obvious they were hugely popular, since Diana was accosted in the hallways every five seconds by someone trying to talk to her, but for some reason nobody seemed to want to talk to Cass. But Laurel muttered something about a Club, a word Cass had heard rumours about in every class since she’d started school, and refused to be drawn further into the matter. After two weeks of trying, Cass gave up.   
  
One day when she arrived in the back room, there were two boys sitting there with Diana, twins she’d seen skateboarding around school, barely dodging the football players and occasionally flicking up girl’s skirts. They didn’t seem the type of people Diana would know, but when she looked up and saw Cass standing uncertainly in the doorway, she introduced them. “Oh, Cass! These guys are Chris and Doug Henderson; they live on Crowhaven Road as well. Chris, Doug, this is Cass Howard; Mrs. Howard at Number Twelve is her grandmother.” The boys looked surprised at that – Cass somehow expected that reaction – but were polite to her throughout lunch, even though they were loudly debating the merits of various local bands.   
  
Another day, a curvy girl with strawberry-blonde hair and a vague expression came in with a huff. “Deborah and Faye have detention, so I’m eating in here. Who’s this?” she demanded, and Laurel took over the introductions, since Diana hadn’t arrived from English yet.   
  
“This is Cass Howard, Suzan – she lives at Number Twelve.”  
  
“Oh!” Suzan exclaimed, suddenly looking much more interested. “Diana never mentioned that at – anyway. I didn’t know you’d moved into our little road. Cass, you said?”  
  
“Yeah,” Cass replied.   
  
“I’ll have to tell Faye all about you. You moved just before school started?” At Cass’s nod, she bit into her Twinkie and spent the next few minutes staring at Cass in a way that made her very uneasy. Laurel didn’t really seem to know what to do, and Cass was relieved when Diana finally showed up.   
  
“Suzan!” Diana said. “What – have you met Cass?”  
  
“Yes,” Suzan grinned. “I was just saying I’ll have to tell Faye.”  
  
“Who’s Faye?” Cass asked.   
  
Suzan’s smile was a little smug. “Why, hasn’t Diana told you _anything_? There are twelve of us – thirteen, if we count you,” and her tone indicated that she didn’t, “living on Crowhaven Road, and some of us get along better than others. Faye is on one side, and Diana here’s on the other.”  
  
“Like the Good Witch Glenda versus the Wicked Witch of the West?” Cass couldn’t resist asking, since they all seemed so tense.  
  
Suzan blinked. “As it happens, _exactly_ like that. Aren’t you the clever one?”  
  
Cass frowned, and stared at her sandwich. She didn’t see Suzan furl her brow in concentration, and when the girl spoke again it was a surprise. “So, Faye has a date with Jeffrey Lovejoy tonight,” Suzan said.  
  
“Oh, but he’s…” Melanie trailed off.   
  
Cass didn’t dare look up from her lunch tray, since it was obvious there was more going on in the conversation than she could quite decipher, especially when Diana added, as if she were adding to whatever Melanie had left unsaid, “Besides, hasn’t he got a girlfriend?”  
  
Suzan snorted. “He’s been dating Sally Waltman, but that hasn’t stopped her. Anyway, have you heard from Adam lately?” Her tone was arch, teasing, and Cass lifted her head just in time to catch a faint flush appear and recede on Diana’s cheekbones.   
  
“Who’s Adam?” Cass asked; Diana hadn’t seemed that close to any of the boys she’d seen around school.  
  
Laurel smiled. “Oh, haven’t we told you yet? Adam is Diana’s boyfriend…”  
  
“He went down to the Cape this summer, actually, to research some things,” Diana added. “You might have met him, I guess – he’s staying right where you used to live.”  
  
“I guess,” Cass replied. “But it’s not very likely – us locals didn’t hang out with the summer crowd much.”  
  
*  
  
That night, Portia called, and Cass tugged the phone into one of the disused rooms, where she could sit on a sofa covered in a dust cloth and not be interrupted. “It’s just a little weird, you know?” she said, when Portia asked how she was doing at school.   
  
“Weird how?” Portia asked. “I guess it would be weird, starting at a new school and everything, but you sound as though something else is up.”  
  
“It’s just – there’s a whole group of kids who live on my street, like a dozen of them. I told you about Laurel and Melanie and Diana, right?”  
  
“Yeah, and they sound nice,” Portia interrupted.  
  
Cass huffed, thinking. “Yeah, they are. And they all live, like, down the road from me. There’s only twelve houses on this street, and a couple look vacant, and every other house – from what Laurel’s said, I haven’t met that many people yet – has a teenager our age living there. So, I don’t know – I told you about those rumours, right? The ones about the Club?”  
  
“Yeah,” Portia said.  
  
“So they’re. Just, all the time, you know, like New Salem has this big secret that _I don’t get._ And it’s weird, because Diana is seriously the most popular girl in school, but she’s not like – it’s like she doesn’t even know anyone but Laurel and Melanie and the other kids on this street. They’re all like that. Practically the first thing Laurel has said whenever we’ve met anyone she knows is that I live on Crowhaven Road, and it’s like that’s a password to something. And…” her voice drifted off.   
  
“And?” Portia questioned sharply. “That _is_ weird. Keep talking; I’m supposed to be doing my Physics homework, but Mom said I could call you first, so you have to keep talking or else I’ll have to do Physics.” Portia’s voice got a little worried, when Cass didn’t even laugh. “Cass?”  
  
“You know how your Nana used to tell us about witches?”  
  
“About how they’re evil?”  
  
“No, about how they – oh, I don’t know – how they keep themselves apart from other people? It’s – it’s a little like that, I think. I mean, you’ve got to come up here and see, but the road, it’s not even in a suburb. It’s completely isolated from the rest of the town; you have to pass a cemetary and some fields to get here. And – it’ s a small island, and you know how cemetaries are always built on the outskirts of towns, at least originally. But all the houses up here are really old, at least a hundred and fifty years, and my Grandmother said that the newer ones replaced the original houses, and that the land has been in the same families since the island was first occupied. But there’s nothing special at this end of the island, and the houses are quite close together, so it’s not like it was just a farm that happened to get subdivided later – it’s like the families _planned_ it like this, like they were trying to keep separate. And they still do.” Her voice grew firmer. “It’s probably nothing, though, just me being stupid because I’m new here and I don’t fit in.”  
  
“It doesn’t…” Portia stopped, and when she started again her voice was hard, harder than Cass had heard in ages. “It doesn’t sound like nothing, Cass. It sounds like something.”  
  
“What, you think they’re witches? My grandmother has lived here all her life. My mother grew up here – what does that make me? A half-witch? Portia.”  
  
“Don’t get all defensive!” Portia retorted. “I don’t think you can be a witch unless you want to be a witch. And weren’t you saying that your grandmother has the largest herb garden you’ve ever seen? I’m just saying….”  
  
“Oh, for God’s sakes. We’re not witches!” Cass snapped, but there was laughter in her voice. “Anyway, so I told you that my English teacher is evil, already. And she gave us the worst assignment ever to do this weekend!” Portia let the subject of magic in New Salem go, and they spent the next fifteen minutes arguing about Donne.  
  
*  
  
Days passed, and the conversation in the back room got more and more tense with each lunchtime. Cass could tell that the others were exchanging glances with each other over her head, and rumour – according to a cheerleader Cass was vaguely friendly with in English – had it that the kids of Crowhaven Road were planning a party. Cass hadn’t heard anything about it from the sources, though.  
  
One Wednesday, a girl showed up at lunchtime. She was blonde, with turquoise eyes that matched her sweater, and a couple of years younger than the rest of the group – not that she, Cass supposed, could consider herself part of the group. “I’m so excited about my party this weekend!” was the first thing that popped out of her mouth, before she noticed Cass put down her tuna sandwich to stare. “Oh!” Diana, sitting closest to the door, shook her head a little.   
  
“Cass,” Diana said. “This is Kori, Chris and Doug’s younger sister. Kori, this is Cass. She…”  
  
“I moved in to Number Twelve Crowhaven Road at the end of the summer,” Cass broke in, resigned. “And I’ll just – I’ve finished my lunch anyway,” she lied.   
  
“Oh, no, it’s not… Cass,” Laurel started.   
  
“It’s sort of a – well, we’ve all grown up together, you see, so we’d only really planned on having the twelve of us there, and it just seemed rude to talk about it in front of you, since it’s such…” Diana tried to explain.   
  
Cass snorted. “Don’t worry about it. I was planning on driving down to the Cape this weekend anyway, so it’s not like I’ll be sitting in my room on Saturday night while all my friends here throw a wild party I can’t attend. I think Lisa’s parents are away, and if they’re not we’ll probably have a sleepover,” she said, and everyone else relaxed. Kori, still standing in the doorway, moved forward to take a seat.   
  
As Kori sat, Cass stood and gathered her things. “Cass,” Laurel pleaded. “Don’t be mad.”  
  
“I’m _not_ ,” Cass insisted. “I’ve got to go to the library for English anyway. It was nice to meet you,” she smiled, turning back as she opened the door – and promptly bumped into someone on the other side.  
  
The someone was actually two someones, a short, dark-haired girl with a scowl on her face and, behind her, the most gorgeous boy Cass had ever seen in her life. Of course, she’d seen him around school before, storming the hallways as if he owned the place, but she’d never gotten very close; he’d shied away from Laurel and company. “Watch where you’re going, whoever the hell you are,” the girl said. “And what were you doing in there anyway?”  
  
“I’m Cass Howard,” Cass answered. “I just moved into Number Twelve – you know, Mrs. Howard’s house?” And it seemed her theory was correct: it was a password. The girl looked a little shocked, and the boy arched one handsome eyebrow on his handsome, handsome face. Cass smiled her dreamiest smile, the one that made people think she didn’t pay attention, and moved past them.  
  
*  
  
The drive back home on Friday after school took half an hour less than it should’ve, Cass keeping her foot down harder on the accelerator than strictly necessary. She stopped once, in Boston, to go to the bathroom and buy a diet Coke, and got to Portia’s house just in time for a slightly late dinner.   
  
Dinner was chicken and pasta. Cass sat in the same chair she’d been sitting in every time she had dinner at the Bainbridges, dozens of dinners over the years, and didn’t say much. Mrs. Bainbridge asked questions about school, and how her mother and grandmother were doing; Cass answered around mouthfuls of food and tried not to look too relieved to be back in her hometown.   
  
“There’s a party at Marcia Tarrington’s tonight, if you want to go to that,” Portia said after dinner, once they’d settled themselves in her room. “Or else, Lisa’s parents _are_ going away, and we can have a sleepover the whole weekend if you like.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Cass replied. “Maybe we could go to Marcia’s party first, and then go back to Lisa’s for the rest of the weekend? Rent some videos and eat too much chocolate?”  
  
“Sounds good,” Portia said, relieved, because Cass had been unexpectedly quiet up until then, and….  
  
“I don’t get why they didn’t even mention it to me,” Cass said suddenly. “I mean, it’s not as though I know her, and _knowing_ they were going to all go to a private party for someone I don’t even know was hardly going to hurt my feelings, you know?”  
  
“Well, they don’t know you very well yet,” Portia said, practically. “And I guess – if they’re not friends with anyone who doesn’t live on your street, and they’ve all been friends forever, maybe they don’t know how to treat anyone else. Who isn’t one of them.”  
  
“I guess,” Cass said, dubious. “No, you’re right,” she continued, more forcefully. “It’s just that I’m new. Anyway, party at Marcia’s – what am I going to wear?”  
  
Portia smiled. “Well, Grandmother sent me down these great hairclips you could borrow… Oh! And I haven’t even shown you the computer Dad got me – separation gift.”  
  
*  
  
The crowd at Marcia’s was exactly what Cass had been expecting. The faces in the living room were those of people she’d known since middle school, and she was greeted by a whole group of people as soon as she stepped through the door with Portia, Lisa, and Therese.   
  
Cass was looking, even if she did say so herself, especially good that night. Her hair was loose, falling in soft waves halfway down her back, and her eyes had been carefully made up by Lisa, who had a neat hand with cosmetics. From the looks of some of the boys, they agreed. Mark Butler, who she’d dated once – disasterously – in her freshman year, came over while she was grabbing a beer, to slide his hand around her and whisper that there were rooms upstairs, empty rooms with locks on the doors. She pushed him off her, and walked back over to Portia, who’d just returned from the kitchen.   
  
“Marcia’s getting sloppy,” Portia whispered. “There’s boys from the wharves here.”  
  
Cass grinned. “What would her mother think?”  
  
Portia laughed, a staccato beat that drew eyes from a few of the others. “You are feeling bitchy, aren’t you? I thought you said you were fine!”  
  
“I am!” Cass replied. “But I just – I wish I were still living here.” She blinked. “Now isn’t the time, really. I’m going to look for myself.”  
  
Portia smirked, and Cass wandered to the archway into the kitchen – and froze.   
  
In the middle of a group of guys was a tall boy with long limbs and messy red hair, a boy she’d seen before, even though she couldn’t remember when. He looked up from his conversation momentarily, and she saw that his eyes were blue, dark as a storm. But then the other boys were staring at her, and Eric Anderson was stepping forward to hug her. “Cass!” he shouted. “Nobody told us you were coming back!”  
  
“Oh, just for the weekend,” she said, looking at the boy with red hair. “And when Portia told me about the party, I thought it’d be great to see everyone, so here I am.”  
  
Eric grinned. “The carrot-top is Adam Conant; he’s been working on my dad’s boat over the summer. Adam, this is Cass Howard – she moved up the North Shore over the summer, and has come back to visit us all.”  
  
The boy – Adam – was frowning at something, and Cass had the most peculiar idea that it had something to do with Eric’s arm slung over her shoulder. Cass could have told him that there was nothing between Eric and her, that they’d fooled around a little in the eighth grade, but that was it, but – what a thing to tell a stranger. A voice in her head, the one she’d been hearing more since she’d moved in with her grandmother, told her that he’d want to hear it, but it was drowned out by the ones that told her she ought to be remembering something, and those ones were drowned out by the ones that said she should be happy to be home, with her friends. “Nice to meet you, Adam,” she smiled, and he grinned back, charming and infectious.   
  
So she took a step forward, and then another, and Eric pulled on her arm to speak softly in her ear. “He has a girlfriend, and he’s going home tomorrow. This is a going-away party, sort of.” Cass only laughed, and shook her hair at him a little, before perching herself on the bench with her beer in hand, and introducing herself properly to Adam.   
  
They clicked immediately, something she didn’t expect. She didn’t have to even bat her eyelashes at him to get him to grin at her, and he laughed at all her jokes. People drifted in and out of the kitchen, grabbing snacks and drinks and ignoring the two of them flirting by the kitchen sink. “Come dance with me,” she said impulsively a while later, when the beat from the living room was getting insistent and her butt was getting sore from sitting on the bench too long.   
  
They froze when he grabbed her hand to help her off the bench, and she could feel his fingers on her hand for a long time after he let it go. But he followed her into the living room regardless; she could almost _feel_ him thinking, _this isn’t a good idea._ The song was fast and heavy, and the living room crowded, so that they moved close to one another, even though he was careful not to touch her again. Something about the girlfriend back home, Cass supposed.   
  
The music changed, one song after another until Cass was laughing and breathless. Adam was a good dancer, unlike almost every other boy she’d ever danced with, and his limbs moved in concert even though he still looked like a boy, slightly unfinished. After the third song he got over his thing about not touching her, and they started to dance properly. Cass was surprised he knew the steps.   
  
It was an easy enough thing to move her hand from his shoulder to trace the line of his collar, and then to insinuate herself further into the circle of his arms. It was easier still to gaze up at him through her eyelashes, and tug him over to the staircase. Not once did he, through word or look or deed, indicate that he didn’t want to take her upstairs, that this wasn’t something he wanted to do, and didn’t that say something about the girlfriend back home?   
  
In the moment, halfway up the stairs, when she _knew_ that he was going to kiss her, that he wanted to kiss her, the voices in her head started to speak, telling her that this was wrong, that she might flirt with boys at parties but she didn’t let them take her upstairs, that he had a girlfriend and he was going home and so was she, and didn’t this make her a slut? But the deepest voice silenced them all, saying _I want him. This is right._ And even though she didn’t understand it, she listened, so that when he leant in she leaned right with him, and they staggered up the rest of the stairs.   
  
Kissing Adam was like nothing else she’d ever experienced, trite as that sounded. His lips were soft and his jaw strong, and she imagined she saw a silver light wrapping around them in the moments before she closed her eyes. Then she stopped thinking and just _was_ , as he pulled her closer and she wrapped her fingers in his fantastic hair.  
  
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said after a while, lifting his mouth away from her collarbone. “I have a girlfriend.”  
  
“Then stop,” she dared him, and stroked her fingers down the side of his face. “You’re a nice guy, you wouldn’t want to hurt her. Not that she’d ever find out – we’re never going to see each other again.”   
  
Something flickered in his eyes. “But I’d know – and it’s wrong, cheating.”  
  
She smiled. “And it’s wrong for girls to go after boys they’re never going to see again,” she countered, and then pulled him down so that she could kiss him. He didn’t stop her.  
  
Afterwards, he sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. “What have I done?” he groaned, picking his underwear up off the floor. She felt like replying with something caustic, although nothing immediately sprang to mind – it had been much better than she’d expected for her first time, just as esquisite as the romance novels painted it, but as afterglows went, this was ridiculous.   
  
“You fucked me,” she replied eventually, and was ashamed of the crudity as soon as the words left her mouth.   
  
He ignored it. “We’ve been dating since the seventh grade,” he announced as she pulled up her panties, and it was as if she wasn’t in the room with him anymore. She supposed she wasn’t, not in any important sense, but there was something else as well, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She’d seen more handsome boys – the boy from Crowhaven Road who she’d crossed paths with on Wednesday, for one – but when she looked at Adam she couldn’t help but think _perfection_ , and it didn’t seem like just post-coital stuff. Not that she’d know anyway, she supposed.   
  
So, “Your girlfriend?” she asked, and he nodded as he did up the buttons on his shirt.   
  
“Diana,” he clarified. “My girlfriend is Diana.” With a snap, bits of the story fell into place in her mind: Diana, with a boyfriend named Adam _(now she remembered, after the fact)_ who happened to be on the Cape for the summer, right where she was from, a boy who had to be going back to New Salem tomorrow for Kori’s party, the one she wasn’t invited to. She felt sick.  
  
“I didn’t need to know that!” she burst out.  
  
Adam stared at her. “I’m sorry,” he said sarcastically. “But it’s not as though I know the way these things go!”  
  
“Neither do I!” she snapped back. “I have to go now,” she continued, and pulled on her top. He didn’t even look at her as she unlocked the door and left the room.  
  
*  
  
Cass burst into tears in the car on the way to Lisa’s house. When she’d gone back down the stairs, almost everyone else had left, and Portia, Lisa, and Therese were waiting in the living room for her, talking quietly amongst themselves. They looked up when she entered the room, her hair a mess and several red marks on her neck. Lisa grinned, but Portia looked worried. So they'd collected their coats in a hurry, said goodbye to Marcia, who was cleaning up the kitchen, and made their way to the car in record time.  
  
The tears were prompted by Lisa saying, "So, you made it with a boy from the wharves, Cass? Good for you - plus, no messy strings. That's always my problem, strings." Lisa had lost her virginity in the first semester of their freshman year, and hadn't looked back since; Cass had never been ready to go that far.   
  
Indeed, she didn't know why she'd let it get so far with Adam, except that it'd felt right, somehow, to take off her clothes and let him touch her; to take off his clothes and touch him right back. "Oh, Cass, was it that horrible?" asked Therese, concerned, while Portia stroked her hair in the back seat. "She can't go back to your place like this, Lisa," Therese added in an aside. "Maybe we should go and find someplace still open, have something to eat."  
  
"I think that's a good idea," Portia agreed, and Cass gulped back a sob.  
  
"It wasn't bad at all," Cass said suddenly. "It was perfect, everything I ever dreamed. But - I know him, or I will: he lives on my street." She took a deep, gasping breath.  
  
Portia's eyes widened. "He lives _on your street_?" she demanded.  
  
Cass nodded. "I think he's Diana's boyfriend - she and I are getting to be friends, and she told me she had a boyfriend called Adam down on the Cape, and he was going home for a party this weekend, the one I came down here to avoid since I wasn't invited, and he, tonight, his name was Adam and he was going home tomorrow," she wailed.  
  
"Oh," said Lisa, from the drivers seat.  
  
"Yeah," said Cass. "I can't think - I think he's going to be at school on Monday, and I'm going to have to face him and pretend it didn't happen, because they've been dating since the seventh grade. And what if he thinks that I knew, that I did it on purpose to hurt Diana?" Her voice grew more frantic.  
  
"Calm down," said Portia. "It'll be okay!"  
  
"Don't be stupid!" Cass spat.  
  
*  
  
She drove back to New Salem on Sunday afternoon at a crawl, stopping every time she passed something that looked vaguely interesting, like a shop advertising a shoe sale, or a pretty stand of trees on the side of the road. Sometimes, she stopped for no reason at all, but to lean against the side of the car and take deep breaths. She drove up the scenic route, a narrow two-lane highway that traced the line of the coast and had picnic spots every few miles.   
  
When she got back to Number Twelve - she couldn't think of it as home, yet - she could hear her mother and grandmother laughing about something in the kitchen, so she trudged her way up the stairs slowly and ignored their calls to come back downstairs and tell them all about her weekend. In her room, she dropped her bag down by her bed without turning on the lights, and made her way to the armchair under the window. It felt like she stared out at the ocean for hours, as stars twinkled and the moon moved across the sky.   
  
Later that night, she dreamed - or, perhaps, she didn't. She dreamed that her mother and grandmother came up to her room and carefully undressed her and put her to bed, speaking to each other in slow, hushed voices. "Something must have happened this weekend," her dream-mother said. "It's not like her to not talk to me."  
  
"Something did happen this weekend," her dream-grandmother replied. "Constance told me they held the last initiation on Saturday night, the little Henderson girl."  
  
"Well, _good_ ," her mother answered sharply. "At least now I can be sure that Cass isn't going to get mixed up in things."  
  
There was a long period of silence, where Cass was besieged with images of the ocean in sunlight and, strangely, sand being poured by a hand, before her grandmother spoke. "It's in her veins, Alexandra. Don't be so sure that it's something she can escape."   
  
After that, Cass lost focus, and when her alarm woke her the next morning, her chin crumpled a little before she pulled herself out of bed. She dressed carefully that morning, nothing to make her stand out, and was unsurprised when Diana called to say that her boyfriend was back, and would Cass mind dreadfully getting a ride with Laurel and Melanie without her? Cass didn't mind, not in the least, and walked to Laurel's glad that the inevitable had been delayed a little longer.   
  
The morning passed in a blur, all the voices in her head fighting for attention. The deepest one, the one that kept telling her not to fight her destiny, was the only one she squashed, in favour of listening to the ones telling her that this couldn't possibly get any worse; that she only had to get through today and then tomorrow and then the rest of the school year and doing that as a social pariah wouldn't be too horrible, except that it would be, clearly. She was just about to duck inside the library for the lunch period - Diana's boyfriend would surely be a senior, she didn't have to worry about running into him in any of her classes - when Laurel caught up with her in the hallway. "Cass! There's somebody you have to meet!"   
  
And what could she say? _I'm afraid I might have slept with him on Friday night_ , wasn't something you said to people who were about to introduce you to their best friend's boyfriend. "Okay," she agreed, and was proud that there wasn't even a hint of despair in her voice.   
  
Walking to the cafeteria felt very much like walking to an execution chamber. She concentrated on her steps, one foot in front of the other for one hundred and twelve steps, past checkerboard linoleum onto a wooden floor and then through a set of double doors onto the grey linoleum of the lunchroom. Her sneakers were old, comfortable and worn, and she noted absently that she'd need to replace the laces soon. She could hear his voice as they approached the back room, and it didn't seem strange to her at all that she could pick it out in a room full of voices. It was talking about the Cape, about how much fun it had been to be working all summer, about how he hadn't found what he'd been looking for after all, and they'd talk about that more later, because he'd had some ideas.   
  
It broke off abruptly as she entered behind Laurel. "Adam!" Laurel said cheerfully. "This is Cass - Diana told you about her, yes?"  
  
"Yes," Diana confirmed. "She's just moved here..."  
  
"And I moved into Number Twelve with my grandmother," Cass said dully.   
  
Adam was frozen in place, eyes fixed firmly upon her. "You!" he said, sounding shocked and slightly ill.   
  
"Yes," she answered. "Hello," and she lifted her gaze to his, catching out of the corner of her eye the strange silver cord she'd noticed every time she'd looked at him. Everyone else in the room fell silent, confused, and the beginnings of a frown formed on Diana's brow. Cass barely noticed; although she'd been dreading this meeting, she hadn't expected it to be this horrible.  
  
"Adam, what is it?" Diana asked, and Adam opened his mouth to speak.   
  
THE END


End file.
